Ship Breaker (Ship Breaker #1)(47)

Looking back the way they’d come, he used his free hand and touched his forehead to the Fates and prayed they would be all right. That they would be able to hold Richard off, that he would believe the story that Tool had betrayed him for the sake of a reward, and that Pima’s mother and Pima hadn’t been the ones who had stolen a Lucky Strike from his hands. Nailer prayed for the people he had abandoned and then he turned his face forward again and let the wind rush past. He opened his mouth, gulping at the heat and speed and smells of the jungle.

Through the trees, a flash of ocean showed, blue and bright. The train was slipping toward the shoreline. In the far distance, he caught sight of the moored clipper ship, its sails glinting in sunlight, a white gull resting on a mirror sea. He grinned at the sight, at the thought of all those swanks who would be scrambling now, trying to find them in the jungle, all of them never realizing they had been fooled and that their quarry had outwitted them.

The view of the ship and ocean disappeared, hidden again by the emerald tangle of blurred trees and vines. Nailer turned and peered down the length of the train, looking ahead to where the towers of drowned Orleans would eventually rise.

16

The problem with a clever escape was that it helped to have planned for it.

In their rush to slip away, they’d left with few supplies, and riding in the gaps between train cars meant it was impossible to scavenge for food. Within hours, Nailer was starving. He thought longingly of the dinner he’d had the night before.

He would have thought that by sitting still they would have hardly needed to eat. After all, it wasn’t like working light crew. But his body was already whittled by a lack of food from his time of fever and now his belly pressed against his backbone. There was nothing to do about the problem, so he gritted his teeth and felt his belly grind on emptiness and promised himself he would scavenge a feast when they arrived in the drowned city.

The train, in addition to the access ladders to the roofs, had tiny service platforms between the cars, but these were hardly more than steel planks two feet wide, suitable for standing and working, but terrible for hours of riding. Early on, Tool made his way down the length of the train, hunting for open bays in the train cars, but he was unable to crack any of the sealed compartments and so they huddled in the train gaps with the ground blurring beneath them and the wind whipping all around. It was awful, and yet still better than the hot roofs of the train with no protection at all from the blaze of the sun.

Sleeping on the brink of the wheels was nearly impossible. They pinned themselves between the ladders, perched precariously above the blurred ground and slept in nodding shifts that broke off at abrupt moments when the train jerked forward or slammed to a slower speed. All of the train’s braking and acceleration came in jerks and shuddering decelerations that threatened to throw them off their perches. After Nailer and Nita were nearly thrown down into the train gap, they rode with their arms threaded through the ladders. Another time, as the train slammed itself to a slower speed, Tool almost crushed them, his whole bulk smashing them against metal and leaving Nailer’s head ringing.

But all of those discomforts were nothing against their lack of water. The few bottles they carried in their pack were quickly drunk and by the second day all of them were parched and hollow in the heat and humidity. There was nothing to do but watch the landscape rush past and hope that the train would reach its destination soon. Sometimes huge lakes spooled past. They debated jumping from the speeding train into the cool inviting water, but Tool shook his head and said that they would never catch a train again at this speed, and unless they wanted to spend days walking, they must suffer instead.

Nailer resented the idea, even though he didn’t want to ever try to jump a train again and knew that the huge creature was correct. So while they killed time and watched the landscape roll past, they talked.

“Who are the people who are after you?” Nailer asked Nita. “Why are you so important?”

“It’s Nathaniel Pyce. A business-marriage uncle.” She hesitated, then said, “He and his people want me for leverage.”

Nailer frowned, confused. Nita saw his lack of comprehension. “My father learned about some of his dealings. Pyce was misusing the family’s corporate resources. Now Pyce wants to use me to keep my father from making trouble. I’m the best way to put pressure on him.”

“Pressure?”

“Pyce wants my father to allow something he disagrees with. If Pyce controls me, my father has to acquiesce. Pyce stands to make billions, and not in dollars. Chinese red cash. Billions.” Her dark eyes bored into him. “That’s more money than your ship-breaking yards will make in their entire lifetime. It’s enough to build a thousand clippers.”

“And your dad’s against that?”

“It’s tar sands development and refining. A way to make burnable fuel, a crude oil replacement. The valuation has gone up, because of carbon production limits. Pyce has been refining tar sands in our northern holdings and secretly using Patel clippers to ship it over the pole to China.”

“Sounds like a Lucky Strike to me,” Nailer said. “Like falling into a pool of oil and already having a buyer set up. Shouldn’t your dad just take a cut and let this Pyce run with it?”

Nita stared at him in shock. She opened her mouth. Closed it, then opened it again. Closed it, clearly flummoxed.

“It’s black market fuel,” Tool rumbled. “Banned by convention, if not in fact. The only thing that would be more profitable is shipping half-men, but that of course is legal. And this isn’t at all. Is it, Lucky Girl?”